Montenegro to Reorganise its Prosecution

Montenegro is considering establishing a special prosecution office for organized crime and corruption, and also allocating more money overall from the state budget to state prosecutors.

Milena Milosevic

BIRN

Podgorica

To mark the Days of the Montenegrin State Prosecutors, The Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Dusko Markovic, gave a speech at a conference in Budva on Wednesday where he affirmed Montenegro’s intention to create an environment where the judiciary would be freed from any illegitimate pressures.

“Our goal is to create an environment in which the prosecution would prosecute, courts would judge, and others would respect the authority and work of judiciary,“ Markovic said.

Markovic added that, as part of the efforts to rationalise Montenegro's court network, the authorities are considering establishing a special prosecution office to assist in the fight against organized crime and corruption.

Currently, there are special departments within the state prosecution office for cases of corruption, organized crime and war crimes.

Ranka Carapic, Montenegro’s chief state prosecutor, said that the success of those departments in rooting out corruption in both the state and local government, as well as in the police, the courts, health service organisations and inspectorates, had been recognised through the EU’s decision to open negotiations with Montenegro this June.

She praised the effectiveness of Montenegro’s prosecutors, noting, however, that they needed more money for their work.

“The praise that we usually get, for being run on a modest budget, just won’t satisfy us anymore”, she said.

The Days of the Montenegrin State Prosecutors were established to mark November 1, 1934, when the first Montenegrin law on state prosecution came into effect.

Background

The muted response to the Croatian town of Vukovar’s decision to scrap controversial bilingual signs in Latin and Serb Cyrillic script suggests the EU has lost focus on minority rights, analysts claimed.

About

The Balkan Transitional Justice initiative is a regional initiative which has been supported by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCO and Robert Bosch Stiftung that aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice issues in former Yugoslav countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia).